David & Janice The grey-haired-nomads

Grey haired nomads

David & Janice The grey-haired-nomads

David and Janice embarked on a life of serious travel on retirement in 2004, setting off from their Norfolk, England, home on a three-year journey by motorhome across Europe and circumnavigating North America. Travel, it seems is now a major part of their lives, fulfilling their joint love of culture, dramatic scenery, wildlife, hiking, writing and photography. This is their story.

Scotland 3 - 2017 25th June – 15th July Continuing our travels through Scotland Islands - On to Mull and Iona, with hopes of finding otters and white tailed eagles! The ferry crossing from Armadale, south across the Sound of Sleat to bustling Mallaig on the mainland, took just twenty-five minutes allowing us time to meander the coast road past tiny coves with white sandy beaches, through elegant Arisaig and on to Glenuig for our evening meal at the Glenuig Inn. This lovely little village has its own community shop with free WiFi, a village hall, a bus shelter, a smokehouse, a museum, B&B at the Inn, and its very own red telephone box! There are still a number of red telephone boxes in the Highlands, those remnants of British village life where a penny gave ... read more

Scotland 2 - 2017 25th June – 15th July Continuing our travels through Scotland. Islands – Handa and the Isle of Skye. There’s a strange light coming from somewhere outside our motorhome. Fine shafts of yellow appear through the slats of the screen on the window above our heads as we open our eyes to a new dawn. It must be that rare commodity up here in Scotland, sunshine. A peek outside reveals an azure sky shared with a few fluffy cumulous clouds heading south. Time then to head for Handa Island, a ten-minute ferry ride from the tiny harbour at Tarbet, a few miles down the road, before it starts to rain. Handa is one island we have missed on previous journeys. It’s a privately owned, boggy, rocky, treeless uninhabited island, promising a four hour ... read more

Scotland 2017 25th June – 15th July Kilts, Bagpipes, Clootie Dumplings and Haggis We’re doing it again: setting off in our motorhome for that bit at the top of the UK where it’s bound to rain bucket-loads, the midges will be out in force and many of the roads will be frustratingly winding and slow. Yes, it’s Scotland and the Highlands once more: the little bit of the UK untouched by the Roman Empire, the land of warring clans, sword swinging, tartan skirted, hairy warriors with tam o’ shanter bonnets and their wailing bagpipes waking the dead. This time we’re travelling in convoy with our Australian cheese-maker friends, Jan and Trevor, from Redhill, Melbourne, in their own motorhome. So, yes, it’s raining in Stirling, our starting point, when we arrive to take a look at the ... read more

Amazing Iceland 3 of 3 A whale of a time! Low cloud greeted us once again this morning, but there are occasional breaks as we backtrack northwards to Egilsstadir and take the gravel track 70 km out to Dyrfjoll and the cliffs at Hafnartangi to check out the puffins! Parts of this road are now surfaced, winding, ever winding, through lush green moorland, between gushing rivers and snow-topped mountains. Sure, it’s a long way out and a long way back but there’s a reward for the effort. A short-eared owl performed its graceful flight for us, whimbrel and redshank called, red-necked phalarope danced around in circles in pools, harlequin ducks rode the rushing rivers and whooper swans grazed the marshes en route. Wow! And finally, the cliffs: thousands of jovial puffins in rafts on the water ... read more

Amazing Iceland 2 of 3 3rd June 2017 Are you ready? OK. Here’s what Janice has planned for us over the coming two weeks. The rental car seems to work: it’s diesel, there’s just about room for us, our three suitcases are in the boot and the clock reads 42,197km. The circumnavigation of Iceland is relatively simple. Route 1, a neat and tidy surfaced road for most of the way, winds 1330 km around the coast, beside the odd fjord, through endless lava fields, up and down valleys and up and over snowy mountains. That’s the simple bit. But the grey-haired nomads are not known for keeping to the simple life. What’s the fun in that? So, expect a bumpy ride. We’ll be travelling in an anticlockwise direction, so follow us on the map. There are ... read more

Amazing Iceland 1 of 3 Why on earth did we choose to come here, Janice? We were up at 2am to catch the 6am EasyJet red-eye from London Luton. It’s now 9am and we’re sitting in our LHD automatic hired Renault Megane in Keflavik under a leaden sky with the temperature gauge pushing 4C : it’s raining like the bath’s overflowing and there’s a mighty north-easterly blowing off the arctic across a bleak barren landscape threatening to blast the hinges off the doors should we venture outside the car. And the sign on the airport luggage-trolley said ‘A Warm Welcome – It’s in our Nature.’ We should have gone to the Bahamas. There are no song thrushes to wake you from your slumber on a bright spring morning on Iceland, or nightingales to lull you to ... read more

Incredible India - 3 of 3 Southern India Karnataka, TamilNadu and Kerala It took most of the day to cover the 275km from the rolling hills and fertile fields of Ooty to the arid plains of Kochi (Cochin) by car, careering past brightly painted lorries, cars and motorbikes on narrow winding roads. There are signs of better things on the horizon as earth-movers and workmen plough their way through the countryside in an attempt to dual the road and hasten prosperity to the masses. We have finally entered Kerala, the name on the lips of the many visitors who have come before us, the green and fertile land they call, God’s Own Country. Between bustling villages vibrant with colour and clamour, vast rice paddies stretch to the horizon, bordered by narrow water-courses and whispering coconut palms. ... read more

Incredible India 2 of 3 Southern India 26th January 2017 Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala These are the fertile plains of Karnataka, vast fields of rice, cotton, bananas, carrots, flowers and brassicas, and out through the early morning mist to our left, the Western Ghats, their high, forested peaks diminishing gently into the dusty grey of humidity. These are the green lands of Southern India we came to see, on this, our second trip, to Incredible India. Our journey today takes us two hours to the south of Mysore into the Bandipur National Park on the Karnataka state border with Tamil Nadu, from where we will access the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve. The excitement starts immediately on entering the park where a guard checks our driver’s paperwork: spotted deer, long-tailed macaques, langur monkeys and great views of ... read more

Incredible India Southern India 1 of 3 Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala Many of our friends have expressed their frustration with long-haul travel in recent times: the long journey to the airport, exhausting queues at check-in, shoes off, shoes on, belt off, pull up trousers, belt on and empty pockets at security, three-hours of waiting around in that other world of make-believe in the departure hall before takeoff, and then the traumas of immigration on arrival. Maybe they’re right. Immigration with the new Indian eVisa at Bangalore was the final straw for us, queuing for ages as passenger after passenger struggled with inefficient fingerprint machines, retina cameras and the like. They do love their bureaucracy: passports and photos on arrival at our hotel too. But then, we British left them with that legacy didn’t we? We ... read more

August 2016 Life is like a toilet roll. The closer you get to the end, the faster it goes. I’m now of an age where it’s time to say thank-you to a few friends from the past for their part in my wondrous journey through life. To that end I recently visited Archie, a work colleague from the ‘60’s, who set me on the management trail. He proudly professed to being ninety-and-a-half. My grandson, Fred, pretty much at the other, thick end, of the toilet roll, would likely be just as proud to tell me he’s nine-and-a-half, still with a hundred sheets of delightfully soft white tissue waiting to plot his future. It’s that old master of fate, the bell curve. Some of you might know it well. Fractions of the year are at their most ... read more